Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary
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fair height. ‘Don’t talk to Angela like that! She’s only trying to help.’
The boy didn’t apologize, only looked sullenly at Angela; then abruptly he was gone from the doorway, folding himself out of sight. Olive put out a hand and took Angela’s. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right, darling.’ Angela squeezed the hand in hers, then gave it back to Olive as if it were something that embarrassed her, like a gift of money. ‘Inspector, let’s cut this short for this morning. Give Olive time to get over what happened last night, then perhaps she’ll be able to give you more help.’
Malone stood up. ‘Righto, we’ll give it a rest for today. But there will have to be more questions, Olive. In the meantime I’d like to go down and have a look through Will’s office. Did he have any staff?’
‘Just a secretary. She called me this morning, she’s terribly upset. Her name’s Jill Weigall.’
‘Could you get her for me? I’d like to speak to her.’
He followed Olive in to a phone in the front hallway. She dialled a number, introduced him, then handed him the phone. ‘Treat her gently.’ Then she left him, a little coldly, he thought, as if he had suddenly turned into some sort of enemy.
As soon as he spoke to Jill Weigall he knew that she was a girl on the edge of hysteria. ‘I was going to ask you to meet me at Mr Rockne’s office – ’
‘No, no, I’ll be all right. I’ll meet you there – it’s something to do – ’
He wondered if she lived alone, but it was none of his business. When he hung up Angela Bodalle was standing beside him. He could smell her perfume, a subtle bouquet, and he wondered why anyone, coming to console a friend on the loss of her husband by murder, would bother to apply perfume. ‘If you are thinking of going through Will’s files, forget it. You can’t get an open warrant. You’ll have to name something specific you want.’
‘Is that free legal advice?’
She looked at him appraisingly. ‘inspector, are you looking to fight with me? I’d have thought we were both friends of Olive, that we’d be on the same side.’
He backed down; he didn’t know why she irritated him. Perhaps it was no more than that she was a lawyer. ‘Righto. In the meantime I have to get some helpers . . .’ He called the Maroubra station, spoke to Carl Ellsworth. ‘Have you come up with anything since last night?’
‘We set up a van near the surf club. We’ve been trying to trace everyone who had their cars in the car park. There were four hundred people in the social club last night. Not counting the staff and the entertainers.’ Ellsworth sounded peeved, as if everyone should have spent Saturday night at home watching television. Preferably The Bill, the British series that showed how tough life was for cops. ‘Oh, Sergeant Clements is here, he wants to speak to you.’
Good old Russ: on the job, starting at the starting point. ‘I think the boys here have got everything under control, Scobie. It’s gonna be the usual slog, unless they come up with a witness who saw everything. Where d’you want me to meet you?’
‘I’m going down to Rockne’s office – ’ He turned to Angela Bodalle, who was still shadowing him. ‘What’s the address?’
She gave it to him. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Malone gave the address to Clements. ‘If Carl Ellsworth has anything for me, bring it with you.’
He hung up, gestured for Angela to go ahead of him and followed her into the living room, where the family was now congregated. It was a large room, but had the narrow windows of the period when the house had been built; Olive had attempted to lighten it with a pale green carpet, green and yellow upholstery on the chairs and couch, and yellow drapes. The only dark note in it this morning was the family. They all looked at him, the intruder, and not for the first time he wondered why the voters bothered to call the police, why they didn’t clear up their own messes.
‘Will you let me know if you find anything?’ Olive sat between Shelley, her thirteen-year-old daughter, and Mrs Carss. The tableau suggested the three ages of a Carss woman: the resemblance between them all was remarkable. They had another common feature: shock.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jason, unwinding himself like a jeans-clad insect from a chair.
‘There’s no need,’ said his mother. ‘Angela has said she’ll go down with Mr Malone – ’
‘Mother – ’ The boy was treating his mother almost formally, as if to mask his defiance. ‘Now Dad is dead, I’m the man of the house. I better get used to whatever I’ve gotta do.’
His sister frowned and screwed up her pretty face. ‘Oh God, Jay, don’t start that Big Brother crap – ’
Her grandmother reached across a generation to slap her arm. ‘Watch your language, young lady!’
‘Let’s go, Mr Malone.’ The boy spun round and went out of the room.
Malone looked at the assembled women. Rose Cadogan was gathering up the coffee cups to take them out to the kitchen. Malone noticed for the first time how remarkably neat the whole house was; it might be full of emotional debris, but the carpet would be swept, the corners dusted, the cushions plumped up and arranged. He wondered who the housekeeper was, then guessed it could have been any one of Olive, Rose or Mrs Carss. There was a neatness about them that would always be with them, they would die neatly if they had anything to do with it.
‘For what it’s worth, I think Jason is right. He’s got to start learning to be the man of the house. Don’t worry, Olive, I’ll teach him gently.’
He went out of the house, followed by Angela Bodalle and Jason. ‘Can I ride with you, Mr Malone?’ said the boy, not looking at the lawyer.
She seemed to take no offence; she had built up a defence against all males, from schoolboys to senior judges. She walked away to her car: a red Ferrari, Malone noted.
‘I thought you’d have preferred to ride in a car like that,’ he said to Jason as they got into the seven-year-old Commodore. ‘She wouldn’t need to get out of second gear to outrun this bomb.’
‘It’s not the car. I just don’t like flash women.’
‘I wish I was as much a connoisseur as you. What do I call you, Jay or Jason?’
‘Fred.’ A slight grin slipped sideways across the thin, good-looking face. He had thick blond hair which, Malone guessed, would be even fairer in the summer, and the sort of complexion that would always need a thick coating of sunblock to protect it from sun cancers. ‘Bloody Jason, I hate it. Call me Jay, I guess. Everybody else does, except my mother and my grandmother. And Dad.’
‘How did you get on with him? Did you confide in each other?’
‘Is that what fathers and sons are supposed to do?’
‘Tom and I do.’
‘He’s, what, nine years old, Mr Malone. He confides in you, but you don’t tell him everything, right?’
This boy, unlike his mother, was years ahead of his birthdays. ‘So you and your father didn’t talk much, is that it?’
‘Not as much as I’d have liked. This is it, next to the milk bar.’
There was council work going on at the northern end of the beach promenade; at long last it seemed that someone had decided to give Coogee a face-lift. Malone had come down here as a boy and youth to surf, but it had never been a popular beach with real off-the-wall surfers. For the big, toe-curling waves you went south, to Maroubra.
He pulled the Commodore into a No Parking zone. Last night’s wind had dropped and today promised to be an early, if very early, spring day. Out of the car he paused a moment and looked away from the beach. Over there, in its shallow hollow, was Coogee Oval, where he had begun